The Book of Everything

Yesterday we took the kids to the Belvoir St Theatre to see The Book of Everything, I'd had the tickets tucked away in my diary for more than a year and had completely forgotten what the play was about, all I remembered was that it was meant to be good for ages 8 and up.

From Australian Stage

The Book of Everything | Theatre of Image & Company B Belvoir

AUNTIE PIE: Have you thought about what you want to be when you grow up, Thomas?

THOMAS: Happy. I want to be happy.

The Book of Everything centres on nine-year old Thomas, a little boy who dreams big. Directed by Neil Armfield, this magical tale follows the story of a child who sees things others cannot imagine, and whose spirit and curiosity wins over those around him.

Thomas is writing a book. His father says all important books are about God. Even so, Thomas writes down all the interesting things he sees that other people seem to ignore - tropical fish in the canal, a deluge of frogs, the Son of God popping in for a chat – and calls it The Book of Everything.

Featuring a colourful cast of characters, including sunny Auntie Pie, the vicious Bumbiter, a beautiful girl with a leather leg, the startling Mrs Van Amersfoort, and Jesus, this play will appeal to adults and families over the holiday season.

Neil Armfield said, ‘The Book of Everything has enormous spirit and celebrates the ability children have to let their imaginations roam. It’s a funny, generous show that will grab your heart and challenge your mind, no matter how old you are’.

...

The Book of Everything is based on an original novel written by the award-winning Dutch children’s writer Guus Kuijer. It was adapted for the stage by Richard Tulloch, one of Australia’s leadng writers of books, plays and television for young audiences. He was the principal writer of Bananas in Pyjamas and has written numerous children’s books including Danny in the Toybox and Being Bad for the Babysitter. His 2003 Sydney Festival puppet theatre piece Twinkle Twinkle Little Fish went on to play on Broadway. His other children’s plays include Hating Alison Ashley and Talking to Grandma While the World Goes By. He also works as a travel journalist, and speaks fluent Dutch enabling him to write the stage adaptation for The Book of Everything from the original novel.

It was fantastic!

The Belvoir Street theatre is a fairly small venue, the front row of seats is right up against the stage, we were in row C and the kids were quite amused to find that the easiest route to our seats was to walk down the stairs onto the stage and climb up the side of the section to our seats at the far end of the row - much better than climbing over everyone sitting in the rest of the row! The program for the show most unusually included the entire script of the play, Tom has been reading it today. The script is illustrated with the scenery backdrop paintings that were used in the production.

From the script:

Style
This is an ensemble piece; actors not involved in particular scenes sometimes remain on stage, observing, commenting on the action and supplying sound effects and props as required.

(The) design...featured a large copy of Thomas's book, The Book of Everything, standing upstage centre. Pages were turned during the performance to reveal...the different locations.

This worked brilliantly, the movements of the actors flowed beautifully as they came in and out of the centre stage area and turned the giant book's pages to change the settings. The fourth wall was somewhat permeable but the many nods and winks to the audience didn't stop the kids (and me!) from becoming quite involved in the story. There was laughing, gasps of surprise, indrawn breaths of fearful anticipation (that was mostly from Tom) and even tears a couple of times - I had to scrounge a tissue from Adam, rip it in two and give half each to Tom and Caitlin at one point.

During interval the cast went around the audience distributing frogs* for us to throw on stage early in the second act, we were also required to make frog noises - much fun! At the end of the play there was a scene which required rather more people than there were cast members, so audience members were brought on-stage as extras. There were a couple of adults and a handful of kids chosen and the very last to be asked to join in was Caitlin, she didn't have her hand raised or anything so it was a bit of a surprise and I think she was a little overwhelmed but she rose to the occasion :-) It was quite distracting to have my own kid on-stage during the last scene - I kept watching her instead of the actors!

What I really wasn't expecting (and this will teach me not to check for details of what a play is about before arriving at the venue with the kids!) was the somewhat confronting domestic violence part of the plot with both Thomas and his mother being beaten by the father and the 16 year old sister confronting her father with carving knife in hand. But, being a story intended for kids, there was resolution and healing at the end and it certainly led to interesting conversations about relationships on the way home in the car.

There's a rather nice preview article on SMH which includes an interview with the 33 year old actor, Matthew Whittet, who played 9 year old Thomas.

*Green ping pong balls :-) Had you worried there for a moment didn't I?

Drama

I'm not usually a big fan of drama in my life, but there are varieties I quite enjoy. Last night we had a bit of both.

Tom was dropped off at rehearsal for his Drama school's end of year showcase performance at 3:30pm, he was happy and excited and all was well with the world. When we arrived just after 6:00pm he was sitting outside looking somewhat forlorn. I asked if he was ok and he announced he was feeling sick and wanted to go home.

I had a strong suspicion that either something had happened that upset him or that he was simply suffering from stage fright. But there has been a bit of a tummy bug around, David and I had both had it...

During drama classes early in the year he'd several times suddenly decided he'd had enough and up and walked out of the class to lie on the grass outside (much to his teacher's consternation, who would look around the room to find Tom missing). He would say it was because he couldn't stand everyone being so loud - he's like me, too much noise and chaos makes us both feel physically ill.

At in the middle of the year when the drama school did Midnite in an afternoon and evening show we'd had a similar moment in the time between the two performances. Tom insisted he really wanted to go home, I managed to persuade him to stay and at the end of the night he was admitted to being glad he'd stuck it out.

Last night was a little more complicated, all three grandparents had come to see Tom perform and on top of that Adam and I were both committed to taking part in the parents' item. Even if Tom bailed out we couldn't really leave. Eventually, after much negotiation, Tom agreed that we'd sit at the back of the auditorium, near the door, and he could go outside if he needed to. I went to tell his teacher that Adam and I would indeed be there for our performance and the next thing I knew Tom came running up and plonked himself down with his classmates all set to be a part of the show after all. I'd given up trying to persuade him to perform but apparently I'm better at that than I thought.

The show was a series of skits based on Aesop's fables, written and directed by the students and student teachers. The parent's item was a brief introduction to Greek theatre and Aesop leading in to The Tortoise and the Hare. It was narrated by Karyn (Tom's drama teacher) and the parents' job was to ad lib the actions illustrating the narration. We didn't know what parts we were getting and we hadn't seen the script. I ended up with the role of the Tragic Greek, robed in a flannelette sheet toga and armed with a plastic Sting replica. Adam was The Hare, his costume was a ballet skirt and a red scarf (over his blue sun t-shirt, shorts and sneakers), the cause of much hilarity.

The Comic Greek and I were first up, acting out the concepts of Comic and Tragic drama, illustrating the worship of various gods and then throwing Aesop off a cliff at the end of his brief life-story. Then it was time for the fable.

The Tortoise kept removing her shell to take a swing at the Hare, the Hare was having way too much fun playing up to all his female fellow performers and the Tragic Greek completely failed to keep a straight face through it all. Apparently there's a video of the whole thing out there somewhere, hopefully I can get hold of a copy.

Tom's class began their skit by coming on stage dancing and then breaking into small groups to act out fables involving donkeys. Tom was the merchant in The Merchant, The Donkey and The Salt. He was awesome (even if I do say so myself), he stomped in anger when the donkey lost the salt in the river and he cheered in glee when his trick with the sponge caught the donkey out. After the show he was explaining about how he had to do really big gestures and expressions so that the audience would see properly - he certainly got that part right!

After all the performances came the awards, medals for students who had been with the school for 3 years, most popular class member and best actor in class both voted for by the class members, best and fairest chosen by the teachers and student teachers, scholarships, and most improved.

In Tom's class the most improved award went to a "young man who nearly didn't make it on to stage tonight."

Here he is this morning, still as proud of himself as he was last night when he went to collect his award and stood on stage with, as he told me, "a bit of a tear in my eye."

I'm rather proud of him too.

Baghdad Wedding

Tonight Adam and I went to see Baghdad Wedding at the Belvoir Street theatre. It was very good, well worth seeing. My mum had gone earlier in the week to see it with friends and phoned me a little worried that we might not enjoy the play because she'd found it quite harrowing and confronting but I said all I cared was whether it was any good. I can see why mum was discomforted, there's a fair bit of graphic sex and violence stuff in there, but there was also a good dose of humour. I thought the acting was great, the set design was very effective and cleverly used and the story engaging.

From the Belvoir St Theatre website:

"A wedding is not a wedding in Iraq unless shots are fired.

Salim likes London. He got his medical degree, had an affair with a man and wrote a successful novel about it. But now Saddam Hussein’s gone and Salim’s going home to get married.

Sexy, funny and thrilling, this is life in Iraq as we never get to see it. Salim and his friends drink, love, argue, hope and tumble between escaping and succumbing as their country staggers to its feet again.

In 2005, 30-something Hassan Abdulrazzak queued with hundreds of fellow emigres in London to vote in Iraq’s first post-Hussein elections. When that great hope went belly-up, Abdulrazzak wrote his first play. After it opened the Evening Standard said, “The Prime Minister and his cabinet should take a brief course in political illumination. They should go to see Baghdad Wedding”. Company B’s friends in the UK immediately sent us the script!"

Review in the Sydney Morning Herald - "Powerful odyssey of love, sex and war."

I was amused enough by the sign at the foot of the stairs leading up to the theatre to pull out my camera.

No shoe-throwing allowed!

If only I didn't still have a thumping headache from the lack of coffee thing I'd say the evening worked out very nicely. At least my ear is pretty much all better.

Seventeen years

In September of 1988, one month shy of my 18th birthday I went to a party I had not been invited to. My best mate's girlfriend had been invited so we figured that was close enough. I knew a fair few of the people there, well, their faces and names at any rate, they were people who had been 2 years ahead of me at high school. It was a pretty good party, we danced and were silly and there may have been some booze involved (ok, there was definitely half a bottle of vodka involved but SHHH don't tell my mum!*). My parents were away on holiday for the weekend, I don't remember why I didn't go with them, I didn't have a job or anything, maybe I was supposed to be studying for the HSC? Anyway, at the end of the night my friends and I were heading back to my place to continue festivities and, um, I took this guy home with me (it's ok Mum - NOTHING HAPPENED!). Except here we are twenty years later and I still haven't got rid of him.

Three and a bit years later we got married.

Yesterday we abandoned the kids with my mum (or perhaps abandoned my mum with the kids?) and took ourselves off into the city for a bit of celebratory eating, theatre going and...er...sleeping, yep, that's what hotel rooms are for you know.

We had dinner at East Chinese Restaurant at Circular Quay then popped over to Portobello Cafe for coffee and tiramasu before wandering down to the Opera House to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). We were a little early for the show so we sat on one of the benches looking over the harbour and watched the sun set.

The show was brilliant and hysterically funny. Adam and I had seen it before but neither of us remembered it very clearly and it has a significant element of improvisation and topical references, I'd go again in a heartbeat, in fact we're thinking if the opportunity arises we'll take the kids next time too. Nothing quite like laughing so hard it brings tears to the eyes, good for the soul that is.

On the way back to the hotel (we were staying overnight at the InterContinental) we picked up some chocolates from the Guylian Cafe, there's still half of them left for tonight, I'm hiding them from the kids.

This morning we were not woken by a dog's tail wagging with great force against the bookshelves beside our bed, or by a small boy climbing onto our bed and talking non-stop to said dog, or by the sound of children fighting. Instead we woke of our own accord - AT 6:15AM! Well, I did anyway, Adam was snoring gently still. I managed to drift off again till about 7:45am and then took another 45 minutes to actually get out of bed. We had breakfast at the buffet and then headed for home.

Happy wedding anniversary Adam. Thank you for a lovely evening and for 17 years of putting up with me. You're my best friend, a wonderful hubby and terrific dad, I love you.

*I know, this will be the day she finally remembers to check that link I sent her *waves* Hi Mum!

The Nargun and the Stars

The Nargun and the Stars

"The magical world of Patricia Wrightson’s much-loved novel comes to life on stage in a stunning visual feast, featuring ERTH’s large scale puppets, live actors, and digital animation.

The story follows Simon, a boy orphaned and relocated to his distant cousins’ bush farm, where he soon meets the indigenous creatures of the land: the trickster Potkoorok, the mischievous Turongs, the cave-dwelling Nyols and the Nargun, a terrifying stone creature.

Combining visual spectacle with Wrightson’s warmth, humour and richly drawn characters, this is a story of not only adventure and discovery, but also of respect for the land, Indigenous culture and its folklore. The adaptation is informed by ERTH’s on-going consultation with the original story owners, the Gunai/Kurnai, Monaro and Boon Wurrung communities of East Gippsland."

The performance we went to last night was the first preview of the show. At the beginning someone came out on stage and explained that it was in fact the very first time they'd done a complete run-through with all the lighting and effects and so on, and that there might be some things that didn't work quite right. He explained that there were 3 actors, 5 puppeteers and about 100 people backstage and he introduced the musicians and lighting people. It was kind of cool, gave the kids a bit of a feel for the mechanics of putting together what they were about to see on stage.

As far as being a first run-through everything seemed to go pretty smoothly though I'm sure there were a few things they'll tweak to tighten it up. The puppets were great, they looked fabulous and the puppeteers did a lovely job conveying character and emotion with them. The set design was quite clever with transitions from one location to another happening quickly and clearly.

I don't remember much about the book from my reading it way back in my primary school days (I do remember loving it though - I still have my pet rock named Nargun) so when the kids kept asking me questions about the story I had to say I couldn't remember, just wait and see. Tom was a bit scared at one point and wanted to swap seats to sit next to me, Daddy clearly not being up to the task of protecting him. Afterwards as we walked back to the car Tom (and the other 2, but mostly Tom) talked non-stop about the characters, why they did certain things, how they felt about events in the story and about each other, what would happen to them now after the story's end. I was so pleased by how engaged the kids were and just loved how the play provoked such deep thinking from Tom.